Jackpot
by vajallie
Summary: Tenten can imagine herself manning a weaponry shop but Neji can't. Disregarding his personal endeavors for her, Neji gives one advice regarding her future.


**A/N:** For TentenWeek2020! Day 2 Prompt: fortune-telling, future.

Warning: I have no idea how palm reading works.

* * *

Jackpot

Summary: Tenten can imagine herself manning a weaponry shop but Neji can't. Disregarding his personal endeavors for her, Neji gives one advice regarding her future.

.x.x.

Neji ran his fingers through his dampened hair. He sat out by his veranda as the strong sunbeams burned his skin. He was sweating and she was sweating as well. Opening up his yukata to cool his chest and glisten in the sun, he happened to land his lively orbs on her. A piece of him wished he'd have the courage to beckon her to sit next to him.

She was beautiful like a fallen jewel sparkling in the summer sun. It was almost unbelievable that someone like her happened to drop by the morning's dawn and improvised a spar. Like an old man with nothing but time, Neji let her waltz into his compound. He welcomed her with the gentle soul of a generous Minka offering its home as a playground for the neighborhood cats. It was serendipity to capture her fluidity before knives rained down. Neji wondered if she felt the same seeing him.

On this hot summer noon, they had just ended their training.

Neji would like to make them official soon, not in the way little children go about making things official. No, Neji would like to marry her one day. It wouldn't be today because she too was glistening by the sweaty dews on her lightly tanned skin. Today, he'd like to admire her and do nothing else.

"And so I thought about being the first export station of weaponry goods in Konoha. Don't you think that would be good, Neji?" Tenten asked him, standing in front of him as her shadow cast over him where the awning couldn't reach.

Lost in this own thoughts, he couldn't hear what former words she spoke to him about.

"I mean, just imagine being the center hub of new weaponry!"

Her eyes filled with tiny speckles of the sun and she smiled. Whenever she did so, even her eyes smiled away, her cheeks would fill until they were plump and her right dimple would glint and wave back to him.

Neji adjusted his collars back onto his shoulders and leaned in to her shadow, "Well, that's a very shortsighted investment, Tenten."

He bore his eyes into her own and found milky chocolate galaxies he had yet to explore. At once, an idea burst into his mind. Her eyes that seem to stretch beyond voids gave him a better suggestion to her future.

It is her future that they were discussing, correct?

"Well what makes you say that?" Tenten asked him. She removed her shadow from consuming him and sat beside him just a friendly distance away.

Neji fanned one of his collars and kept his eyes forward, "You know that peace is heading our way at a pace beyond imaginable. Investing in a weaponry shop or station or whichever you like doesn't sound like the smartest idea." He cocked his head to her, managing to catch her pat her dewy sweat away.

Tenten was the most beautiful when she was perspiring from a workout. She just didn't smell good.

"You want my advice?"

Tenten frowned at him and nodded, "That's why I'm asking, aren't I?"

Neji simpered as she answered him. He settled his aching back on the veranda and let the awning shadow blanket his upper half. Neji then sighed, "I think the village could use your fortune-telling skills or whatever you call them. Running a shop doesn't suit you. You're not the managerial type and your skills would be wasted."

His eyes flew to the clear blue sky with the sound of songbirds accompanying his ascent. Today was too perfect of a day to even think about how much pinker his life would be with her by his arm as his wife.

"The people around you are hopeful for the future now that peace is making home in Konoha. I believe they'd like some reassurance on decisions they're making now for the undefined future," Neji rested his eyes and let her prolonged "hm" hum in his ears.

Although he'd love to know if his future had her, he'd rather keep hope in waiting for the correct day to ask her. Neji smiled softly as she came to her conclusion.

"I'm not too sharp in my sixth sense but I guess I can try," Tenten reasoned. Neji was right for the most part. It was just that Tenten couldn't help but relish in her daydreams of being surrounded by the newest creation the blacksmith had to offer. She'd drool just thinking about being one of the first ninjas to test out a prototype.

Tenten turned to Neji and leaned forward down to him from her crisscrossed sitting position, "Hey, can I try palm reading you?"

Neji lifted his eyes up and met her orbs.

Their distance now could be that of two cuddling leaves.

"S-sure," he delighted himself to her antics. Recalling that the last time didn't go too well, Neji prayed her skills remained dull just in case she could actually read his desires.

With not one second to waste, Tenten giggled and pulled him up by the arm. And when he sat and watched her and gave his palm to her, Tenten grabbed it like a child stealing sweet cold ice cream. It was another once in a lifetime to read Hyuuga Neji's future.

Her fingers pressed and ran miles along Neji's palm. Her eyes gleam at a curve she hadn't seen before, a groove she didn't notice before, and even to the length of his perfectly slender pinky. Tenten felt a sizable heat radiating at her ears. She let them ignite in fiery ambers.

Hyuuga Neji was like cold sweet ice cream.

"You're going to get married this year," Tenten belted out from her watery mouth.

Neji was like cold sweet ice cream: cold because of his stoic personality but sweet because he was melting it away noticeably... also because Tenten genuinely wanted ice cream.

"And who might this person be?" Neji asked her, his eyes fixated on her, pinging between her glowing cheeks and her cherry-red ears.

She would not say a thing but her eyes had moved on from his palm to match is own. Dear, Neji had just found her flushed timidness to be the most adorable thing on Earth.

Neji grabbed both of her weathered hands in the gentlest of ways. "I didn't want to ask you today because it wasn't formal. But now that you already know, Tenten, will you spend the rest of your life with me?"

Tenten's lips quivered with the memory of her sightseeing fading quickly. She blinked and gripped his hands, "I said yes."

* * *

He was wholly correct.

If he wasn't here, she'd be stuck in a shop watching the sun roll by mocking her.

Neji married her when they were twenty, just a bit later than their peers. And fifteen years after drinking their nuptial wine, Tenten's fortune-telling corner was still as popular as ever.


End file.
